Doug's Blog
Web 2.0
Welcome to 2009! This is going to be an interesting year for sure. I was inspired to write this blog after reading Archie McLean's article in the Journal today called, "Constituents can interact directly with PC MLAs through new website". It was a great interview with many different people, which focused on the new websites set to be launched next week called Mypcmla.ca, and focused on the New Web. There were a lot of good quotes from a lot of good folks, but one line in particular stood out to me.
The very last line of the article said it all. With my apologies to Archie for not asking permission, given the short notice, it read: With technology changing so quickly, Wason said the site's launch is just the beginning of its evolution. "Even I don't know where this is going to go." Very telling quote indeed. Now, Archie McLean is one of the media's new media gurus. You can read Archie's full column in Thursday's Journal, and you can hear his podcasts on the Journal website, or you can go to iTunes and subscribe to 'lej out loud', as I do. Troy Wason has made his living, or personally I think a life, as a social media guru. Archie pointed out that technology is evolving and Troy said, "Even I don't know where this is going to go."
Seven years ago, when I was first elected an MLA, I knew I needed and wanted a website to help with getting out information on what I was doing. That was it. I wanted to post 'stuff' to the internet for people to see. Since that very first website in my very first campaign I can admit that I am on my third officially re-engineered and re-developed website. My first website was really good and I got a lot of compliments about it. But the Web has evolved so quickly over the last 7 years that I went from Web 1.0 (posting information) to the newest site that you are on right now, which is approaching a Web 2.0 phase of its evolution.
I admit that I don't have a full blog on this site yet, where people can post comments directly to my posting, but I will get there. This site really fully launched only 5 months ago and already I, and the great people at Vital Effect Web design in Camrose, are working on the full blogging capabilities, RSS feeds, and podcasts. Talk about evolution. THAT is the point to evolution. It changes quickly and no one knows where it will go, or what exactly will be successful. Evolution, whether that of the species or that of technology, is not linear. It is a composition of millions of small changes that occur, a few surviving and growing, and then millions of small changes happening again, with only a few surviving and growing, and then again it happens.
Remember Beta and VHS? Only VHS survived (it was the marketing only because Beta was really better quality), but soon it was replaced by DVD's, which have been replaced by BlueRay, which itself is already almost obsolete because you can now order equal quality movies online as soon as they come out and store them on a hard drive which can feed right into your TV. Now the evolution is already occurring on the types of sites and mediums for ordering and keeping movies on hard drive. The evolution is exponential. Archie couldn't have said it more simply or more perfectly. Evolution.
If you asked me what my website will look like in three years . . . I really couldn't tell you. Smarter men and women than I, have made some great forecasts but even they admit that they can't be sure (right, Ken?). Perhaps three years from now the websites will all be designed for handheld communications devices and laptop computers will become as obsolescent as desktops are now. Or perhaps no one will 'read' the internet anymore, but listen to it. Perhaps all websites will be full interactive and the Web 1.0's will wonder why they get no traffic. Perhaps that is a decade out, but who knows? The evolution is growing exponentially. Just think where we came from 7 years ago; stagnant 'information only' websites to . . . well, Web 2.0.
This, I can say . . . if you told me 7 years ago that I would be using this newly designed website that I am already upgrading 5 months after its release, and that I would also be using Facebook, Twitter, Revver, Youtube, Google Video, Yahoo Video, MySpace, Flickr for pictures, LinkedIn, and now, just new tonight, Digg.com, and that I would have videos and blogs and podcasts all posted for the world to see, I would have said . . . well, I would have said, "huh?". Actually, if you asked me three years ago, when I first forayed into Facebook, I would have still said, "huh".
What the future will bring will be fun and exciting. Some new communication tools will die on the vine, and some will bear fruit, and still others will take over the garden. All I can say is that Archie is right on. Technology is quickly evolving, meaning that the pace is accelerating and that it is just like evolution, not linear, but multi-dimensional with some great winners and some tragic losers. And Troy is also right, and humble, when he says, "even I don't know where this is going to go." Show me who does for sure and I will show you the next creator of the next great social medium, and the world's next billionaire. All that you can bet on for sure is this: social media is here to stay, it will change the way EVERYTHING is done, and those who don't get in (it's never too late to get in so long as you don't give up) will surely go the way of the Dodo (read: extinct).
